2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump
[1] The dumping, which took place against a backdrop of instability in Abidjan as a result of the country's first civil war,[2] allegedly led to the death of 17 and 20 hospitalisations, with a further 26,000 people treated for symptoms of poisoning.
In the days after the dumping, almost 100,000 Ivorians sought medical attention after Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny opened the hospitals and offered free healthcare to the capital's residents.
[3][4] Trafigura originally planned to dispose of the slops – which resulted from cleaning the vessel and contained 500 tonnes of a mixture of fuel, caustic soda, and hydrogen sulfide – at the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
After two Trafigura officials who traveled to Ivory Coast to offer assistance were arrested and subsequently attacked in jail,[8] the company paid US$198 million for cleanup to the Ivorian government, without admitting wrongdoing in early 2007.
In May 2009, Trafigura announced it would sue the BBC for libel after its Newsnight program alleged the company had knowingly sought to cover up its role in the incident.
[11] In 2002, Mexican state-owned oil company Pemex began to accumulate significant quantities of coker gasoline, containing large amounts of sulfur and silica, at its Cadereyta refinery.
During an ongoing civil lawsuit by over 30,000 Ivorian citizens against Trafigura,[16] a Dutch government report concluded that in fact the liquid dumped contained two 'British tonnes' of hydrogen sulfide.
[18] On 4 September, the government called for protesters to allow free circulation of traffic so the area's hospitals, which were complaining of a flood of injured, could operate.
The company claims the ship had been chartered by Trafigura to transport oil to another West African port, and was returning to Europe, empty.
They contend that the slops were an alkaline mix of water, gasoline, and caustic soda, along with a very small amount of foul-smelling and toxic hydrogen sulfide.
A Dutch newspaper[24] reported on this possibility, saying the waste could have been generated as a result of attempted on-board desulfurization (removing mercaptans) of naphtha in a Merox-like process.
It would on the other hand not explain the presence of hydrogen sulfide, as the final stage of the Merox process is an organic disulfide unless the attempt at desulfurization had failed.
[6] In the weeks following the incident the BBC reported that 17 people died,[25] 23 were hospitalized, and a further 40,000 sought medical treatment (due to headaches, nosebleeds, and stomach pains).
[26] On 11 November 2006, a £100 million lawsuit was filed in the High Court in London by the UK firm Leigh Day & Co. alleging that "Trafigura were negligent and that this, and the nuisance resulting from their actions, caused the injuries to the local citizens.
Trafigura announced it would pay more than $46 million to claimants, noting that 20 independent experts had examined the case but were "unable to identify a link".
Shortly after it became apparent that the toxic slops from the Probo Koala had led to the outbreak of sickness, two Trafigura executives, Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, travelled to Abidjan.
They were arrested on 18 September, four days after their arrival, and were held in Abidjan's Maca prison, charged with breaking Côte d'Ivoire's laws against poisoning.
The Trafigura employees Claude Dauphin, Jean-Pierre Valentini and Nzi Kablan, held by the Côte d'Ivoire authorities after the incident, were then released and charges were dropped against them.
The responsible local civil servants were reportedly unaware of existing Dutch environmental laws that would not allow its export given these circumstances.
[38] On 8 January 2007, The Guardian reported that the legal team for Leigh Day had arrived in Abidjan, and would begin taking statements from thousands of witnesses in the area.
The Dutch also agreed to stop the personal court case against Trafigura's chairman, Claude Dauphin, in exchange for a 67,000 euro fine.
On 11 September 2009, Trafigura, via lawyers Carter-Ruck, obtained a secret "super-injunction" against The Guardian, banning that newspaper from publishing the contents of the Minton report.
Trafigura also threatened a number of other media organizations with legal action if they published the report's contents, including the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation[43] and The Chemical Engineer magazine.
The version published on WikiLeaks, which has been republished by The Guardian,[49] appears to be a preliminary draft, containing poor formatting and one comment in French.
[50] Faced with a libel case which under British law could drag on for years and cost millions of pounds on 10 December 2009, the BBC removed the original story entitled "Dirty Tricks and Toxic Waste in the Ivory Coast", along with accompanying video, from its website.
The story featured interviews with victims in Côte d'Ivoire, including relatives of two children who, it claimed, died from the effects of the waste.
But at the same time, the BBC issued a combative statement, pointing out that the dumping of Trafigura's hazardous waste had led to the British-based oil trader being forced to pay out £30m in compensation to victims.
"The BBC has played a leading role in bringing to the public's attention the actions of Trafigura in the illegal dumping of 500 tonnes of hazardous waste", the statement said.
The award went to the British journalists Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean from BBC Newsnight and David Leigh from The Guardian, Synnove Bakke and Kjersti Knudsson from Norwegian TV, and Jeroen Trommelen from the Dutch paper De Volkskrant.
